One that may have been ommitted from continuity years ago too, in fact.

When reading one of the replies that’s certainly what I’m beginning to think now anyway.

And it makes sense. That many of the worst stories of today are based on some of the worst ones of yore.

Spooky.

The following is a statement made by Greg Rucka

“I want to say, before anything else that we tried very hard to build OMAC so that you weren’t obligated to buy anything else, and we failed,” Rucka said. “We really did. I’ll cop to it – I won’t lie about it. And we did it by playing dirty pool too – if you were buying The OMAC Project, you really need the Superman and Wonder Woman books to know what’s happening in issue #4 of the miniseries. If you don’t read them, it’s possible to understand them, but you don’t get the emotional resonance. That was a little bit of dirty pool, but we didn’t plan it out that way – we weren’t looking to spring this on people, but that’s the way it happened, and again, we’re sorry. So instead of a six issue miniseries, you get a ten issue miniseries, and I won’t fault any reader for not picking it up. I’d still suggest them though, because they’re a good story and worth reading, but I’d suggest, if nothing else, you pick up Wonder Woman #219 at the very least – call it issue OMAC #3.5 if you must, because it sets up the events of OMAC #4.”

Greg, with all due respect, I like your work, I really do, but…no. I’m not saying that Mr. Rucka is at fault here, but I will have to say that DC, if anyone, was being very dishonest with the readers by not telling in advance that, in spite of what may have been said earlier, that the OMAC Project didn’t require reading other books in order to understand what’s going on in the miniseries itself, it DID.

The failure of this whole buildup to yet another needless crossover is already starting to be felt. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, DC hasn’t been publishing those silly “this issue sells out/goes back to press” news releases as much as they did before recently. Whether or not they’re selling well, it’s apparent that things are beginning to take their toll.

looks at some more games being sold for when the FF movie’s been released in theaters, including for the Xbox. Looks interesting.

I’d heard something about this, which could very easily be, or contain, propaganda. reports on a publishing company called “AK” from Cairo, that publishes comics with titles like “Jalila, Savior of the City of All Faiths” and “The Lone Warrior, Rakan.”

The very ambiguous article says in it:

“The heroes are purposely crafted to be vague as to their religious faith, and they live a futuristic vision of the Mideast where national boundaries have been blurred and harmony is threatened by monsters, not intractable religious rivalries.”

Now of course, is this telling much? So as a result, I don’t know if those monsters they speak of are meant to be analogies for anyone whose views they disagree with/despise.

“The comics have made a footprint in the Mideast – they are now handed out to kids on every flight of Egypt Air and they have replaced Spider-Man on bubble-gum wrappers in the region. But now AK Comics has its eye on the U.S. market, and so a trip to Comic-Con in San Diego was a must.

“It would be a moral victory to be here,” said Marwan El-Nashar, the company’s managing director. Still, a passing conventioneer who was also a U.S. Marine did a double-take at the booth’s sign. “I thought we were the only heroes in the Middle East,” he told the AK team.”

I’d have to agree with the US Marine on this one, because I doubt that the characters in the books are as heroic as the publishers, and even the LA Times, would like us to think.

Aside from that, notice the part about “moral victories” that the company’s director speaks of. It’s not exactly that. Far from it. For people like that, being able to maintain a presence in a lot of these kind of events is something that comes as a victory to them simply for the fact that they want to muscle in on anything where they can gain “representation” whether they’re deserving of it or not. Or, they hope to sell as much propaganda as they possibly can.

Now, here’s something that certainly casts a shadow of doubt over the sincerity of the convention as a whole:

The convention has become many things to many fans and veered wide enough to include a performance by Tenacious D, the ribald comedy-rock duo that features actor Jack Black. Among the songs about sex and dragon-slaying was the crowd-pleasing political statement of “The Government Sucks.”

So in other words, politics taints the show, is that it? No wait, that’s not what’s wrong here. What is wrong here is that they say “crowd-pleasing” for the song that was played.

If this is what the convention was all about, and which the newspaper ever so conviniently glosses over, then I can’t say that I’m so eager to pay them a visit.

“A more serious note was the panel assembled by Warner Bros. films to debut a trailer for the film “V for Vendetta.” The panel answered questions about the adaptation of a comic that depicts a flamboyant terrorist in England who uses explosives and the subway system to wage war on the government. The book was written in the 1980s and has more to do with Orwell than Osama bin Laden, but the similarities to the recent London bombings gave pause to some.”

Somehow, I can only wonder if the movie’s been written as a contemporary political statement. With movies like Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds littering up theaters today, is it any wonder that we have to approach them with caution?

AK Comics, the Cairo venture, thinks kids in the Mideast need more caped heroes and fewer terrorist tales. The company founder and comics’ creator, Ayman Kandeel, is a 36-year-old economics professor at Cairo University who grew up in Egypt in the late 1970s searching out the hard-to-get Batman comics from the United States. The simple messages of those stories stuck with Kandeel.

“Yes, I do think the entertainment created for young people says a lot about a culture,” Kandeel said. “These are stories of optimism and positive messages about what we can all be.”

I wouldn’t be fooled too easily by what this Kandeel is saying. There are many Arab propagandists who can talk out of both sides of their mouth, and given how superficial this article is, it’s always possible that here too, could be the case.

And if they really do give out comics like these to kids on Egyptian air flights, could it be that it’s because they’re some kind of war/hate propaganda, which this article doesn’t make clear?

For the record, such books that AK is publishing aren’t the first genuine middle eastern superheroes. Michael Netzer once wrote a comic in Hebrew called “Uri-On” in 1987 when he moved to Israel to take up residence here at the time (as far as I know, he still does), and then, there’s also Marvel’s own Sabra, Ruth Bat-Seraph. To say “genuine” is just a self-justificatory statement.

This is funny. The ultra-establishment Captain Comics, Andrew Smith, writes a in which he tries to explain why movie critics didn’t like the Fantastic Four movie, for the following reasons:

All of these critics compared Fantastic Four unfavorably to other superhero movies. And, to a man, disliked FF because it wasn’t as dark and brooding and psychologically troubled as those other movies.

Well, I find that silly. Fantastic Four isn’t like those other movies, because … well, those are different movies. Movies that tell different stories. Fantastic Four didn’t tell a dark and brooding story, because the Fantastic Four aren’t dark and brooding characters. The FF didn’t see their parents gunned down when they were kids (Batman). They aren’t hated and feared by a world they seek to protect (X-Men). They aren’t juggling guilt and responsibility (Spider-Man).

In general, they’re having a whiz-bang of a good time. They’re not even really superheroes — they’re explorers, and they’re celebrities. And their lives are pretty swell. With the exception of the tragic Thing – which does give the story a little heft – the Cosmic Quartet are pretty much a well-adjusted, happy bunch. I mean, for heaven’s sake, it would be a blast to be the Human Torch!

So, to compare “Fantastic Four” to “Batman Begins” is apples and oranges. It’s like watching a bunch of Shakespeare comedies and then going to “Hamlet” … and complaining that it’s not funny enough. Hey, they’re all “plays by William Shakespeare” – shouldn’t they all be exactly alike in tone and theme?

Well, of course not. Nor should “movies with superheroes in them” all be exactly alike.

Now, if you want to compare Fantastic Four to The Incredibles, I’m game. Those are both superhero movies with similar themes. (Pretty much identical themes, to tell the truth.) But both are fun movies, and the DVDs would make good bookends.

“Fun” being the word not found in these reviews – or, apparently, looked for. What the dour critics are missing is the Fantastic Four’s appeal: They’re throwbacks to a simpler, sunnier time. They do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do. And they’re familiar. Despite the super-powers, they’re just like us – only us looking a lot more buff, with a lot more money and fame, and going places and doing things we can only dream of. Which means kids of all ages just adore the FF, without the slightest bit of post-modern irony.

And Fantastic Four, the movie, gave us mostly that. The film (some critics lamented) focused more on interpersonal relationships than spectacle. The only “dark psychological trauma” I saw on the screen was that Reed sometimes ignores his girlfriend, Sue can be a nag, Johnny’s irresponsible and Ben has a bad temper. With the Fantastic Four, like our own families, there’s no tragedy – just a lot of irritation.

Would that I could credit this…but no. Not after the when it came to what DC Comics cooked up last year, in the pages of their very own comics, that being none other than Identity Crisis, whose apparent purpose was to grim and grittify the DC Universe, and to tear down the heroic ideal of the superheroes. Tsk tsk tsk. Putting down the movie critics for lambasting a movie like FF for not being dark, while at the same time backing the steps taken by a publishing company that does almost exactly what the movie critics may have been hoping for with the FF movie! What’s the world coming to?

Now I’m not saying that some parts of the DCU can’t be “dark.” But then, not every character/title in the DC line of superheroes is exactly alike, and it wouldn’t - and doesn’t - work to flat-out make them that way either. So why say that not every superhero movie should be exactly alike, while at the same time supporting/tolerating an attempt in comicdom’s publishing base itself to make ‘em all alike? Batman may work best in the dark, but Superman works best in the light. There is a difference, isn’t there?

Granted, he’s right, that the movie critics do tend to be dishonest in many cases like these. But then if a movie critic can be dishonest with the audience, so can a comic book critic, as I learned when I looked at what websites like The Comic Fanatic, The Fourth Rail, Hero Realm, and even Comic Readers could do. And that is exactly what even Mr. Smith is doing here by arguing one side of the spectrum while supporting another.

Double-stancing aside, another problem is that, most convieniently, he glosses over the harder, more challenging questions as to why anyone, critics or audience, would find fault in this movie. To which I present

After an exciting opening sequence detailing the group’s origins, the movie grinds to a halt as the central quartet sit around and make jokes while waiting for Reed to whip up a machine that will cure them all of their powers. In a strange twist for a superhero movie, there is no world-ending threat, and Victor doesn’t even get around to being particularly villainous until the movie is almost over. Story seems to think that Fantastic Four will work best as either a mismatched buddy comedy pairing the angsty Ben with the lighthearted Johnny, or a romantic comedy pairing onetime lovers Reed and Sue.

He’s wrong on both counts, and while Evans gets in a few good one-liners as the sex-crazed, extreme-sports-loving Johnny, the film goes straight downhill after its opening. Even when the team finally sees some action, the effects are so fake-looking that it’s hard to suspend disbelief long enough to get excited. Chiklis, buried in a ridiculous latex suit, growls excessively, perhaps to draw attention away from how stupid he looks.

Whoa. Now that’s telling something, I’ll say. Not to opine upon the movie, even from an analytical perspective, but, if it’s really as anti-climactic as the reviewer from Vegas says, then waddaya know, they’ve come pretty close to what Marvel, under Bill Jemas anyway, was trying out: taking out the themes from an action-adventure book that make it work best, to say nothing of de-facto rejecting their powers, at least at the beginning of the movie! Why wasn’t this mentioned in the Smith column? The Thing I could understand in a case like this, but the rest of the movie-FF I cannot.

And it doesn’t get any better with the following,

What these mutations inspire is a bad superhero comedy that takes its time going nowhere. Much of it is centered around poor, pathetic Ben, who’s depressed that his horrified wife has left him. In one sequence, he sits atop a bridge where a bird perches on him and relieves itself. Then he scares a suicidal man into oncoming traffic in an attempt to save him. That mishap provokes massive crashes and imperils bystanders whom Ben and friends rescue.

This is supposed to be a bravura sequence. Ben, for instance, stops an oncoming truck simply by letting it smash into him, the metal warping around his body. But the image is too familiar to be rousing. (Didn’t the Hulk do the same thing? Didn’t somebody in a “Matrix” movie?) And the filmmakers fail to top it with a shot as remotely as exciting. Instead, the scene relies on jokes as flat as the acting by Gruffudd and Alba. When invisible Sue reappears in the scene wearing only her underwear, Reed observes, “Wow, you’ve been working out!”

As unhappy as I am with what the critic from the Globe says about the FF as comics characters, that they were “never all that interestingly human to begin with”, which is untrue, I’ll at least have to give him some credit for giving some clues as to why one could end up disliking the movie, and not just the critics. Which is more than I can say for Mr. Smith, who doesn’t say anything, that’s for sure. And while I do dig Jessica Alba, if she really doesn’t have anything else to do other than to serve as attractive wallpaper, then where’s making her into by far the strongest of the team, huh? (Update: after reading I think I may have to reconsider. Sigh.)

Finally, from

Not even the evil fifth person, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), has the necessary bite to be a great villain. For much of the movie, he’s just seen festering along the edges, wringing his hands and smirking malevolently, until his electrical powers are called upon to generate some trouble in the flame-out finale.

A supervillain who doesn’t do anything, if at all? Now this is a novelty, heck, it has to be! ‘Course though, if the underwhelming presentation of the Doomster in this movie didn’t sink it, I’d figure that the ambiguous presentation of his [metaphysical] superpowers would’ve. I can tell though why the filmmakers strayed as far as they did from Victor Von Doom’s origin in the comics: they just didn’t want to use one that would feature a cruel dictator who needs to be opposed and brought down, since for them, it’d be an analogy to the war on Iraq, and today’s film industy nuts who are opposed to the war simply can’t have that. What a shame. But what’s really a shame is that Mr. Smith doesn’t dwell on any of that. And that’s exactly why his column ends up being as underwhelming and unchallenging as it truly is.

I think the best thing I can say in response to this is: pack it in, Mr. Smith. It’s getting old already. And the blogosphere already outmodes his columns 100 to 0. With blogs to help us out, who needs newspaper double-talk like what he specializes in anyway?

that Jim Aparo, the co-creator of the Outsiders with Mike W. Barr, has passed away at age 72.

He will be very missed.

Mark Waid is going to write a new version of the old anthology series, that first began with random characters, then became a Batman-based anthology in 1967, due to the brief popularity of the Adam West TV show. I can tell: this is in order to follow up on Marvel’s revival of their own Marvel Team-Up, which drew on the popularity of The Brave and the Bold, with Spider-Man being the main-based star when it ran in its time.

I hope this’ll be good when it comes out, and I also know that Waid’ll be getting an editorial job similar to what Geoff Johns is getting, but the question is - just how credible will it be, if anything from hereon becomes mandated by Dan DiDio, and even has political biases forced in?

Plus, let’s not forget that, post-Identity Crisis, they certainly have been getting very questionable in how they portray continuity now.

Here’s something to think about: are even comics drawn from Saturday morning cartoons safe from anti-war propaganda? The answer: probably not, as written by the ultra-establishment Don MacPherson of the Fourth Rail, shows:

“What makes this story work is the plausible premise. A young man rejects the notion that his people must rely on an outsider for peace, for justice. The plot unfolds in a corny way, but the message is a solid one. The idea Beechen explores here is one of the reasons there is resistance in Iraq to U.S. efforts to bring democracy to the country. The people feel the Americans have usurped control of their destiny, and that’s why they’re treated as enemies as opposed to being perceived as the heroes the Bush administration wants them to be.”

Now this begs the question: what’s so wrong with being a hero? Or, what’s so wrong about being law-abiding? And who says that it’s just and only the Bush administration that wants the Iraqis to be heroes? And how do we know that they don’t want to be? And, what planet does MacPherson come from, for heaven’s sake?

This is one of the most bewildering opinions I’ve ever seen, making it sound as if being good is wrong. It’s practically mind-numbing. But worst of all, is that this should be taking place in a child-geared comic book.

It’s just like they say: comics are no longer safe for kids.

In the Washington Times, Joseph Szadkowski writes two articles this week on the new Fantastic Four movie. he looks at some toy figures and other games based on the Foursome. he looks at multimedia based on the Foursome. However, I do wish that he wouldn’t waste his time on Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which hasn’t exactly turned out to be the most successful adaptation of H.G Wells’ classic novel, and which, with its political undertones, certainly isn’t going to do much better than some of Hollywood’s other floundering films.

Let’s see what we’ve got here. A review of the Masked Manhunter’s current Secret Files entry But what’s wrong with this review here? It’s that it doesn’t give the whole story of what really goes on in the part with the late Stephanie “Spoiler” Brown being discussed.

Now I’m really not that impressed with the Fourth Rail’s reviewers, but I’ll certainly be willing to thank Don MacPherson what the problems are with the special.

“The problem is that the script doesn’t tell the reader how the Spoiler died or why Robin blames Batman. Derenick’s art seems a lot more polished than usual. His work here reminded me a little of the styles of such artists as Darick (Toxin) Robertson and Amanda (The Pro) Conner.

Oh, and the late Spoiler doesn’t get the profile page treatment, despite being the central plot element in this story.”

Not to mention that DC (and Marvel) seems to have developed quite a habit of sweeping things under the rug, or taking such an incredibly biased [editorial] position as to not even offering an actual profile for the character, simply because she’s dead, whether it’s permanent or not, and even trivializing the characters, dead or alive, to boot.

This kind of bias being displayed by the big two’s editorial staff is but one of the problems that’s destroying comics today. If it’s not dealt with, how will they be enjoyable, and how will the readers even be able to care about the characters, dead or alive?

That’s why these editorial biases are going to have to be stopped, sooner or later. And one really good way to do so is simply by not buying DC’s “product”.